Shared from Ancestral Voices Facebook page:
A prime example of the 'missionary mentality' anything non-christian is deemed as something of the devil. Support the Ancestral Voices films bringing awareness and education on African spiritual teachings. Ancestral Voices 2 (In post-production)
This documentary will explore the philosophies of African cosmologies and spiritual traditions. It will highlight and connect the similarities that exist in the traditions for communities across the continent and in the Diaspora, from ancient times to the present. Areas covered include the African conception of the Creator 'God', the spiritual essence of humanity, our relationships with the immaterial realm and the ancestors in the cycle of life and continuity across realms and daily rituals for living. The shared rituals vary from practices for venerating the creative source and ancestors, to set up altars and how to enhance one's spiritual development.www.ancestralvoices.co.uk/av2

﻿"Peace is more than the absence of war," Prince sings in "Baltimore," the protest song he released following the death of Charm City citizen Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody. A new lyric video for the song, which the track's singer Eryn Allen Kane released, plays up people's pleas for peace as riots and unrest broke out in response to Gray's death, as well as imagery associated with the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

"The system is broken," Prince wrote in a statement that appears at the end of the video. "It's going to take the young people to fix it this time. We need new ideas, new life...."

The singer performed the song for the first time at his "Rally 4 Peace," held in Baltimore less than a month after Gray's death on Mother's Day. The rapper offered at the time, "I am honored to join Prince in his mission to inspire through the uniting power of music and be able to offer a platform where this moment can be shared globally." When Prince posted the studio version of the song to SoundCloud, he included a statement explaining that he'd written the song while watching the riots alone in his Paisley Park Studio. As he worked on the song in the days that followed, he requested Kane fly in to record her part. "Please know that all involved in this project never take for granted the privileges we have in this country," the statement read. "Let's all continue to fight the good fight and confront inhumanity on every level until the day it is no longer." Source of article: rollingstone.com/music/news/see-princes-peaceful-powerful-baltimore-lyric-video-20150722

"Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy." THX 1138, George Lucas' directorial debut, presents a cold, dystopian future in which individual thought and love are forbidden. But two citizens dare to rebel. LUH 3417, a disenchanted surveillance worker, consciously stops taking her mandatory drugs — medication that suppresses emotions — and gives placebos to her roommate, THX 1138. Now free to feel, the two fall in love, but find themselves on the run for breaking laws of conformity.Released March 11, 1971 |lucasfilm.com

About the film | Follow the story of Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal whose landmark 1944 study, An American Dilemma, probed deep into the United States' racial psyche. The film weaves a narrative that exposes some of the potential underlying causes of racial biases still rooted in America’s systems and institutions today. An intellectual social visionary who later won a Nobel Prize in economics, Myrdal first visited the Jim Crow South at the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation in 1938, where he was “shocked to the core by all the evils [he] saw.” With a team of scholars that included black political scientist Ralph Bunche, Myrdal wrote his massive 1,500-page investigation of race, now considered a classic.An American Dilemma challenged the veracity of the American creed of equality, justice, and liberty for all. It argued that critically implicit in that creed — which Myrdal called America’s “state religion” — was a more shameful conflict: white Americans explained away the lack of opportunity for blacks by labeling them inferior. Myrdal argued that this view justified practices and policies that openly undermined and oppressed the lives of black citizens. Seventy years later, are we still a society living in this state of denial, in an era marked by the election of the nation’s first black president?American Denial sheds light on the unconscious political and moral world of modern Americans, using archival footage, newsreels, nightly news reports, and rare southern home movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s, as well as research footage, websites, and YouTube films showing psychological testing of racial attitudes. Exploring “stop-and-frisk” practices, the incarceration crisis, and racially-patterned poverty, the film features a wide array of historians, psychologists, and sociologists who offer expert insight and share their own personal, unsettling stories. The result is a unique and provocative film that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what we really believe.americandenial.com

The following biographical comprehensive and insightful information about the inspiring Èzili Dantò is reposted and shared from the official website of Èzili Dantò. I feel that it is best to leave the telling of herstory up to the direct source, that way it will do justice in making accurate and inclusive notes of her many astonishing accomplishments. She is such an amazing woman of color, an amazing woman period and an inspiration to all.

BIOGRAPHY Èzili Dantò (formerly colonially named "Marguerite Laurent") is a Haitian woman inspired, guided, and directed by the strength, legacy and visions of the Haitian warrior goddess, Ezili Dantò.

She is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, political and social commentator, author and human rights attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Stamford, CT. She holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law, and, attended the Hartford Conservatory for Ballet, Jazz and Modern while studying Haitian dancing at home and with countless Haitian dance experts in the field.Award winning playwright and Performance Poet Ezili Dantò is a gifted spoken word artist who uses Haitian folk dance, performance poetry, theater and creative writing to create the "Red,Black &Moonlight" series, her critically acclaimed one-woman Jazzoetry Vodun dance theater work, which she has toured internationally and also performed at Colleges and Universities, performance art centers, and theaters, including at non-traditional theater venues, such as the United Nations and Carnegie Hall. She is a member of the Poets & Writers guild and an essayist and educator who specializes in using her writing skills and public presentations to teach about the light and beauty of Haitian culture; the "Symbolic and Archetypal Nature of Haitian Vodun;" the illegality and immorality of forcing neoliberalism policies on Haiti and the developing world; the illegality and human rights violations caused by the U.S. embargo against Haiti during the Aristide and Preval presidencies (1994-2004) and the international crimes currently unraveling Haiti because of the U.S.-Canada-France-supported Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'etat and U.N. occupation; the need for France to repay the extraordinary 1825 ransom it extorted from the Haitian people and the constant Euro-US hostility Haiti faces, endures and struggles to overcome as the first Black Republic in the world after Ethiopia in a Eurocentric world which purposely inflames instability, insecurity, impasse and chaos in the Black republics in order to better exploit their labor and natural resources.

She is the author of three plays, a spoken word and jazz CD and two books of poetry and has received numerous awards for her art, activism and civic contributions. In addition to producing and performing the Red,Black &Moonlight monologues, she teaches, through her production company, Ezilidanto's Spoken Word Dance Theater Company, master dance workshops on traditional Haitian dance; does in-school and after school workshops and teaching residencies in performance poetry, creative writing and Hip Hop Theater, and, on "How To Create The One-Woman Show." She has also taught an "Art and Business Law" class as an adjunct professor at various colleges in NY and CT and as a workshop for community and State art councils.

Ezili Dantò won a Connecticut Playwright Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, a Vermont Studio Center writing fellowship and scholarship, a Stamford Arts Partnership Grant and many other awards, residencies and fellowships. She has been a Partner Artist with the Bushnell Performance Art Center, Connecticut's largest performance art center and is an Urban Artist Fellow with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute for Community Research. She was trained by Arts Genesis to conduct curriculum based arts-in-education workshops and teaching residencies for the State of Connecticut.

Ezili Dantò has also worked, for over ten years, as an entertainment attorney within the Hip Hop and R&B music, recording, merchandising and independent film industries. She has represented numerous national and international recording artists and independent film directors, producers and screenwriters. She is one of the pioneers of Hip Hop Theater and amongst a select few activist entertainment attorneys who conduct workshops studying and analyzing the impact of Hip Hop message music and African culture globally. Zili has been called a "Hip Hop attorney" for her career-long dedication to assisting independent labels; for advocating economic parity and democracy within the US music industry; and for advocating eventual artist ownership of their masters as well as for advocating for alternative methods of distribution.

Human Rights Attorney

Èzili Dantò (formerly colonially named-Marguerite Laurent), is founder and President of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN"), a network of lawyers, scholars, journalists, concerned individuals and grassroots organizations and activists, dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad.

Ezili's HLLN is the leading international and Haitian voice against right wing humanitarian imperialism pushing the neoliberal "death plan" and disaster capitalism in Haiti and their corresponding leftist paid-to-lose tenured progressives. In addition, Ezili Dantò and HLLN stands at the forefront in exposing Christian and other foreign missionaries in Haiti playing savior while abusing Haiti street kids and has helped protect women and children, expose sexual predators at the UN, NGOs and hiding in orphanages, including working non-stop for six years to help put pedophile Douglas Perlitz behind bars for abusing Haiti boys under the pretext of providing charitable help and humanitarian aid. (See - Justice for Haiti prevailed: Perlitz going away for a long time.) Attorney Èzili Dantò is the most prolific international writer and advocate for Haiti and is internationally known as the foremost legal analyst and commentator/writer of the untold counter-colonial-narrative on Haiti. Zili wrote a judicial reform agenda for Haiti, advised and supervised on numerous judicial reform projects while working as legal advisor and international foreign consultant to Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide between 1993-1995. The Red,Black &Moonlight performance series is a musical memoir based on that story and her life and work in the United States.

Ms. Dantò has also worked as an international and human rights lawyer and advocate in various capacities, including as the Coordinator of Donors for the Justice Minister in Haiti, working as liaison between Haiti and the international donor community including France, Canada, the United States, Japan, Cuba and Taiwan in 1995. Or, from 2004 to present, by giving voice and creating alternative solutions to criminalization of the poor, unequally applied laws, deportation or indefinite detention to relieve the plight for some Haitians and Haitian refugees in the Caribbean and United States. Partly due to HLLN's steadfast defense and efforts, US deportations to Haiti were stopped from September 19 to Dec. 9, 2008. And many Haitians, over the years, have gained a greater understanding of their rights as human beings, of their own historical narrative, story of struggle, courage, resistance and democracy to counter the colonial myths, or have been educated as to which countries in the Caribbean and North America that do offer asylum and better policy treatment to Haitian workers and better equal protection under the law.

Since the 2004 coup d’etat/rendition kidnapping of President Aristide that destroyed Haiti’s democracy and put it under UN proxy military occupation for the US, France and Canada, Attorney Dantò, through her work at Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, has been the leading and most trustworthy international voice in Haiti advocacy, human rights work, Haiti news and Haiti news analysis. HLLN’s work is central to those concerned with the welfare of the people of Haiti, Haiti capacity building, sovereignty, institutionalization of the rule of law, and justice and peace without occupation or militarization. HLLN's defense and advocacy work paved the way for the release of many political prisoners in Haiti including Prime Minister Yvon Neptune; Haitian human rights worker, Annette August; Catholic priest and civil rights worker, Father Gerald Jean Juste and lesser-profiled others who were illegally imprisoned for years after the illegal and foreign-supported ouster of Haiti’s constitutional government.

In addition to educating defense lawyers who are representing Haitians, providing legal strategy consultations and legal defense referrals for Haitians, HLLN creates leverage, higher profile, greater positive media and congressional interests, for a Haitian people and Black nation that is largely denied human rights, equality before the law and international legal protection, though networking and media, educational and People-To-People campaigns. HLLN's innovative and avant guard work continues, both through traditional and non-traditional means, including alternative media and the internet, to mobilize international attention, creating people-to-people leverage and networks and letter writing campaigns. HLLN pushes for equal treatment for Haitian refugees (in relation to other nationalities similarly situated), permanent stop to all deportations and for the US to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haiti. HLLN advocates, as well, to designate as "political prisoners" many poor victims in Haiti who are dehumanized, arbitrarily and capriciously labeled as mere "gangsters" or "criminals" for political ends and treated disparagingly or illegally detained since 2004, seemingly indefinitely and without trial or any legal fairness whatsoever, so that the US and Haiti's rabid elites may silence political dissent and objection to financial colonialism - 1% of the Haitian population (approximately 11 families) owning and controlling 90% of the country's wealth as feudal lords and modern-day overseers for Western corporate barons. HLLN has presented a policy statement to the Obama Team for a new US-Haiti relationship and is currently mobilizing legislative and international people-to-people support for these US-Haiti policy concerns.

The Ezili Dantò Witness Program documents human, political, civil, cultural and other advocacy rights issues in Haiti, in context and, from a non-colonial perspective, training and supplying ordinary Haitians-with-no-access with computers, cameras, video equipment, satellites for internet access and English translation, so their suppressed voices may be heard direct from Haiti. The programs’ intrepid young Haitian reporters and witnesses’ venture into dangerous areas, document stories that won’t make the mainstream headlines and films and records foreign meddling, waste, atrocities under the UN occupation/NGO shadow government currently in Haiti and take witness statements as they happen.

HLLN’s internet-based newsletter and mailing list services over 3 million readers per post and its original writings are at the leading edge of advocacy work for an indigenous Haitian population working towards decolonization, reclaiming its own historical narrative and deconstructing stereotypical images and perceptions. Ms. Dantò is a regular commentator and news analysis guest on over 22 radio, on HLLN's web-cast and through various internet programs serving communities in the US, Europe, Africa, Caribbean, Canada, and Haiti. Ezili's HLLN is the only Haitian-led pro-democracy voice on the internet, in print and Haitian and alternative radio to be routinely sited by major papers, in books on current political affairs on Haiti, by Congressional members and invited to analyze and present the grass-roots, poor Haitian majority's viewpoint not often heard in the mainstream media and Western citadels of power.

Ezilidanto's Spoken Word Dance Theater Company represents artists whose art is a way for them to empower, honor, respect and refer to their own culture for strength, abundance, self-reliance and expanded awareness and to publicize and promote their own ancestor's great contributions toward world harmony and liberty. The company entertains as well as brings to application, the commitment, community and compassion that was first displayed by the indomitable spirit of Ms. Dantò's African ancestors - the amalgamated African tribes who became Haitians in the land of the Taino/Arawaks. The artists with Ezilidantò are representatives of the new Africans who created the first Republic in the Western Hemisphere; who wrote the first Constitution to expressly recognized the equality of men and women and of all peoples irrespective of race, color or creed; who were the first to legally abolish slavery (67 years before the US, 47 years before France), and, who created the Kreyol language and Vodun psychology that first synchronized the promise of the America's diverse peoples, and, therefore where the first settlers to apply creative and inclusive vision to actualize humane co-habitation, unity and order in the Western Hemisphere. Ms. Dantò's company works to bring these ancestral visions to the forefront and to promote their application globally through law, dance, drama, poetry and creative writing.

Èzili DantòTelling our own story
Rooted in history, recognizing the Haitian-African ancestors as pioneers in the human rights struggle for freedom, Ezili's HLLN and Ezili's media and cultural work promotes and extends, at the core of all that it does, 1). the Haitian right to self-defense decreed by the mother-warrior goddess, Ezili Dantò at Bwa Kayiman and pursued through the Haitian revolution that is continuing today due to the Haitian people's desire to fulfill their divine right to self-determination and economic democracy; 2). the Bwa Kayiman Call and Prophecy and 3). the Three Ideals of Haiti's founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines. To push back and STOP Dessalines' revolution is the reason for all the imperialist interventions in Haiti since Haiti's independence. Ezili's HLLN is here and calls the Island of Ayiti by its name, not Hispaniola (Little Spain!) - but Ayiti (Haiti)! Se pa kado blan yo te fè nou. Se san zansèt nou yo ki te koule. (Go to: Dessalines ideal #2 - What's in a name: What Ayiti Calls Forth?).

Essentially Ezili's HLLN and Ezili's cultural workshops, bring to the fore that the idea of borders and limits based on race, culture, gender, ethnicity, religion and the traditional nation-state borders and limits are obsolete in this world of globalization and instant people-to-people communication. For instance, Haitians in the Diaspora have the entire world as their oyster and ought to use that passport to market Haiti and its grand culture that is so maligned. The Haitian legacy is that of Pan-Americanism and Pan-Africanism. Ezili's HLLN advocates that the people of the Americas must push for ONE American Hemispheric passport. HLLN is the first to articulates this push of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, and to promote this equitable and just principle for starting to repair centuries of US/Euro financial colonialism, forced assimilation, ethnocide, support for brutal dictatorships, unequal treatment, structural violence and the structural containment-in-poverty of the Black, Brown and indigenous masses in the Americas.

Queen Latifah said the experience of playing blues singer Bessie Smith was like driving with the seat belt off. Queen Latifah, 45, the singer, rapper, actress and comedian and talk show host, plays the celebrated blues singer in Bessie, an HBO biopic that has been 22 years in the making. Latifah, who first auditioned for the part in 1992, told the New York Times that the turbulent life of Smith was “hard to watch” on screen but said the experience of playing her was unparallelled. “You have to take the seat belt off,” she said. “With this role, I have to be free. It was every emotion I probably could have asked for. She was a very busy woman and it's always been important to play strong female characters."

Bessie Smith, who was known as the Empress of the Blues, died in 1937, at the age of 43. She was from a poor family in Chattanooga, Tennessee and became one of the most daring and powerful blues singers of all time, celebrated for songs such a I Need A Little Sugar in My Bowl, Give Me A Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer and Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out. The hard-drinking bisexual Smith inspired a generation of singers, including the late British jazz star George Melly, who called her the "finest blues singer of all". “She was not afraid to be wrong or afraid to fight or afraid to tell someone just like it is, and that’s a gift,” Queen Latifah added. “She gave me all the work I could handle. This is Bessie’s story, and it needed to be told.” In Bessie, blues singer Ma Rainey is played by Mo’Nique and Smith's husband, Jack Gee, is played by Michael Kenneth Williams, a star of HBO show The Wire and Boardwalk Empire. Queen Latifah says she worked with a singing coach who trained her to sing in Smith's register.Smith's death in a car crash is not depicted in Bessie. Asked why they had chosen not to end the film, which will premiere on HBO in America on May 16, that way, director Dee Rees said: "I wanted to leave her with a win. People that don’t know Bessie, the one thing they do know is that she died in a car accident. I didn’t want to play into the sensation of that because to me, if you cover the car accident, you’ve got to tear down all that she’s accomplished in the last five minutes. I really wanted it to end on Bessie not as a tragic figure, but as a heroic figure. Her song Long Old Road shows her relentless optimism in the face of impossibility." (Source: The Telegraph)

Queen Latifah — who plays the title role in the HBO movie Bessie — has been working for more than 20 years to bring Bessie Smith's life to the screen and finally pulled it together with writer-director Dee Rees. NPR's Arun Rath spoke with both of them. You can hear the edited interview and some of Bessie Smith's and Queen Latifah's vocals at the audio link below.

Earnestine Rodgers Robinson had high expectations for her life. But musical composition, Carnegie Hall and a concert in Prague, Czech Republic, were nowhere among them. In fact, she had no natural inclination toward music and describes herself as least qualified for a musical career. When asked about her amazing gift she has one simple, yet powerful, explanation – “God likes glory.”

Sitting poised and graceful, Robinson brushed her fingers lightly over her arms, chiming the bracelets on her wrists in a delicate accompaniment to the gentle rhythm of her voice. She spoke softly and simply, joy illuminating her face as she shared her story at AFA Journal offices.

Singing Scripture Robinson claimed no early interest in music; in fact, she avoided musical activities as she pursued a career in mathematics and later as a medical ethicist. But one day, in a last minute review of an Easter program before going to rehearsal at church, she opened her mouth to read and inexplicably found herself singing a beautiful, original melody, an act over which she had no control.

“I started to read the very first thing on the program, John 3:16,” she told AFAJ. “But instead of reading it, this melody just came up and flowed out, and I was singing the Scripture! I could only think, ‘Wow, what happened? What’s going on?’ So I sat and tried to compose myself and then decided, ‘Let me try to read the next one.’ I started to read John 3:17, and the same thing happened. I sang the Scripture; it just flowed up and out of me. When that happened, that was the end. I couldn’t go any further.” So she just closed her Bible, folded the program and went to church.

“When I got to church,” she continued, “I shared what had happened with a young man who was a musician from St. Louis. He said, ‘That’s a pretty melody. Why don’t you write a song?’ And I said, ‘But you don’t understand! I don’t write music! I don’t even play a musical instrument.’ He only replied, ‘Well, if God has given you two verses, I bet He would give you a whole song.’”

“Who could deny that?” she laughed, lifting her hands slightly. “So, I began to write music.”

Following God’s direction Even as she completed The Crucifixion, an oratorio (a large-scale musical work for orchestra and voices, typically on a religious theme, performed without costumes, scenery or action) telling the story of the Passion of Christ, Robinson struggled to establish a niche for her sudden musical gift. Unable to locate a venue that could successfully perform her music, she attempted to proceed with earlier career goals in mathematics and philosophy. But, despite her willingness to surmount obstacle after obstacle, she continually found that the Lord was directing her into a different path.

“Every time I tried to do something, I felt like I was blocked,” Robinson recalled. “I’d go to teach, and the brakes would go out on my car. Three times, I went to register for graduate courses in philosophy and was unable to complete registration. And then the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Why don’t you abide in your calling?’ As long as I wanted Him to be Lord of my life, I had no choice. So I said OK.”

As a housewife and mother of five with no musical training or connections, Robinson experienced tremendous difficulties in finding financing, performers and a conductor for her music. But the certainty that she had received this surprising talent from God strengthened her faith in the face of every challenge.

“I knew that He had given me this music because it was not something I had ever aspired to do,” Robinson said. “You can’t do what you think you want when you have been called to do something. And if you really want Him to be your Lord and Master, He’ll help you to achieve what He wants you to do. But you can’t let your vision be too small.”

Performing with success So Robinson enlarged her vision, and God led her to achievements beyond her expectations. From the first performance of Robinson’s oratorio, subsequent performances were scheduled before one concert was finished. Before her next composition, The Nativity, was even completed, it had been scheduled to premiere at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

And finally, Robinson’s music brought her to Prague for the performance of The Nativity by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. There, the soft-spoken lady born in post Great-Depression, segregation-era Memphis, Tennessee, mingled with European nobility and world leaders who complimented her on her music. But when they asked about her musical background, it was a question Robinson could not answer.

“Even my husband told me,” she said, “‘Earnestine, you may as well stop trying to explain how you wrote this music. I know you wrote this music, and I don’t understand it!’ All I could ever tell people is, ‘It’s a gift from God.’”

Recognizing design In fact, the style of music she writes could only come through a special gift. Described as medieval sounding and influenced by classical, gospel and jazz, Robinson’s music is distinctive and intricate, daunting even the most experienced musicians.

“They tell me it’s like the classical masters because tempos change a lot,” she said. “It’s complicated from a musical point of view. If I had had knowledge of music, I might not have written it that way because it is hard.”

As it was, Robinson never realized she was writing masterful or complicated pieces. As on that first day in reading the church Easter program, Scripture passages set the tone for the music.

“I just do what I feel for the story in Scripture,” she explained. “As I write music, I just feel how the story dictates the melody. Everything is controlled by the story; it gives you the tempo, time, mood. And every song will be different.”

The realization of how God used her lack of ability to write music on the level of highly trained musicians showed Robinson why God chose her for the task.

“I think God picked me – a person who never studied music – because God likes glory,” she said. “I can’t take any claim for it. And so all the music I write demonstrates God’s glory.”

She delights in pointing out God’s design in directing and sculpting her life, preparing her for the calling He had for her. Above all, Robinson shares her story with a focus on the miraculous design God wrought into her life, with a reminder that every person has that kind of story to tell.

As she writes in her autobiography, Driven by Faith﻿, “Life is not dictated by random events but is a path worked out for you by God and everything that happens to you is part of that plan.”

"Apple Mortgage Cake" is an original movie that premiered on the cable Channel UP in April of 2014. This film is
based on a true story, it stars Kimberly Elise ("Hit the Floor," "Diary of a Mad Black Woman") as Angela Logan, a single working mother of three teen boys (A.J. Saudin, Stephan James, Lamar Johnson) facing eviction in 2009 from her already deteriorating New Jersey family home unless she can come up with $4,000 in ten days.

She concocts a plan to bake 100 of her signature apple cakes and sell them for $40 in order to raise the money, and word of her efforts soon spreads locally, nationally and internationally.

Despite being fiercely independent, Angela has to learned to accept the kindness and help of others. In real life, Angela is Angela Logan, now the owner of Mortgage Apple Cakes, LLC, based in Teaneck, N.J. Asked about the movie airing on Easter Sunday, Elise says, "The movie deserves it. It's such a great story. I thought it was such a beautiful and inspiring story and so relevant to a lot of people's situations in our country right now, financially. It offers a rare ray of hope in what is a very dark time for a lot of people."

Logan is also an actress and has a cameo in the film, so Elise got to meet her counterpart. "Angela is a really amazing woman, [a] beautiful spirit," Elise tells Zap2it, "She's resilient and resourceful, obviously. She's very giving, very joyous, very appreciative. I just really respect and admire her so much."

Unfortunately, Angela Logan's household was one of too many with no father in the home.
"That's a reality for a lot of people," says Elise. "But you can't feel sad about it, you have to take care of it, take care of your kids and your family, and that's what she did." "The lesson that she teaches is that we all have something inside of us, a gift, that if we choose to tap into it, it can help us in ways we never imagined."

Logan also did something special for Elise. "I'm a vegan," Elise says, "so I wasn't able to taste the cake. So she surprised me and created a vegan cake for me. It was amazing, absolutely delicious. She made me a cupcake. In fact, it was so good, that it's now on her menu, and she sells it from her bakery, and it's doing really well. She told me she's working on a gluten-free one as well. She's a master; she's going to get it right."

Meredith Curly Hunter, Jr. (October 24, 1951 – December 6, 1969) was an 18-year-old African-American man who was killed at the 1969 Altamont Free Concert. During the performance by The Rolling Stones, Hunter approached the stage, and was violently driven off by members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club who had been contracted to serve as ushers and security guards. He subsequently returned to the stage area, drew a revolver, and was stabbed to death by Hells Angel Alan Passaro. The incident was caught on camera and became a central scene in the documentary Gimme Shelter. Passaro was charged with murder. After an eight-man, four-woman jury deliberated for 12 and a half hours, following 17 days of testimony, Passaro was acquitted on grounds of self defense.

Hunter, an 18-year-old arts student from Berkeley, California, was nicknamed "Murdock" and described by friends to be a flashy dresser with a big Afro. Hunter, his girlfriend Patty Bredahoft, and another couple traveled from Berkeley to attend the Altamont Free Concert.>>read more

Video Description: This musical documentary concerns the Rolling Stones and their tragic free concert at Altamont Speedway near San Francisco in early December 1969. The event was all but destroyed by violence that marked the end of the peace and love euphoria of the 1960s. The night began smoothly, with the supercharged Flying Burrito Brothers opening up for the Rolling Stones and performing the truck-driving classic "Six Days on the Road" and Tina Turner giving a sensually charged performance. But on this particular evening, the Stones made the fateful (and disastrous) decision to hire the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang as bodyguards and bouncers. It was a foolhardy, careless choice that turned the night into an unmitigated disaster; halfway through the Stones' act, the Angels killed one black spectator, and injured several others who were present (including Jefferson Airplane's lead singer Marty Balin). In the film, we watch Mick Jagger -- ere an ebullient, charismatic performer of bisexual charm -- reduced to standing on stage like a frightened child with his finger in his mouth in wake of the violence. Unsurprisingly, the Grateful Dead refused to perform after the violence erupted; the picture ends on a despairing note, with the Stones repeatedly watching a film of the murder. Celebrated documentarians Albert and David Maysles directed and Haskell Wexler shot the film, with heightened instinct and control; as a result, this film is considered one of the greatest rock documentaries ever made. Stones songs performed include "Brown Sugar," "Under My Thumb," and "Sympathy for the Devil."

Video Description: A short documentary about Meredith Hunter, the young man who was killed in front of the stage by the Hell's Angels at the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. Despite being immortalized as a symbol of the end of an era of idealism, Hunter lies in an unmarked grave, lost to history. 'Lot 63 grave c' was screened at the 2006 Sundance and Rotterdam Film Festivals. Sam Green lives in San Francisco where he teaches at the University of San Francisco and the San Francisco Art Institute.

After the film (Lot 63, Grave C) screened widely at film festivals, several people sent donations to the cemetery to buy Meredith Hunter a headstone. The headstone was installed in 2008. (Wikipedia)

The latest film from legendary documentarian Albert Maysles (GREY GARDENS, GIMME SHELTER), IRIS pairs the late 88-year-old filmmaker (who passed away on March 5) with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades. More than a fashion film, the documentary is a story about creativity and how a soaring free spirit continues to inspire. IRIS portrays a singular woman whose enthusiasm for fashion, art and people are life's sustenance and reminds us that dressing, and indeed life, is nothing but an experiment. Despite the abundance of glamour in her current life, she continues to embrace the values and work ethic established during a middle-class Queens upbringing during the Great Depression. "I feel lucky to be working. If you're lucky enough to do something you love, everything else follows."

The Maysles Documentary Center, a not for profit organization, is dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action.